Pearl Buck - Angry Wife

She turned her soft eyes to him now. “We can begin where we are,” she said. “We know everything about each other.”

“Do I know everything about you?” he asked.

She smiled. “There is not much to know. I’ve lived in my sister’s house, and helped her with the children.”

She looked down as she spoke and at her feet she saw a violet and she stooped and plucked it and fastened it at her bosom and went on speaking in her placid sweet voice. “Now I am planning to take Georgy away — to Europe — to train her voice.”

“To Europe!” he echoed and was stunned.

“I always wanted to sing,” she went on, “but of course I hadn’t the opportunity. I know Georgy can be a great singer and I’d like to have my share in that.”

“I thought she wanted to be a teacher,” he objected.

She shook her head. “I don’t want her to get embroiled in all the sorrows of our race,” she said quietly. “Of what use is that? We must wait until the time of wisdom comes to the world.”

She spoke half dreamily and he felt her far away from him indeed.

“You have changed very much, Georgia,” he said sharply.

She shook her head. “No, I have only had time to think — much time. I have had time to ask myself why it was that Bettina and I have had to live solitary. Oh yes — Bettina, too! You see, she is really quite alone — cut off from — everybody except — her husband. And I have been cut off — in quite the same way — except that I have never married — shall never marry.”

“If you go to Europe there might be someone—” He felt jealousy and at the same time he thought of Lucinda.

She shook her head. “No, not for me.”

He wanted to take her hand again as he had yesterday and could not. “I feel somehow a cur,” he murmured.

She shook her head again, smiled and did not speak.

“Or a fool,” he said. “Because I am so confused.”

“We are born out of time,” she said quietly.

He took her words and pondered them and could not reply to them. In silence he gazed out over the rolling hills and the shallow valleys. Among their vivid green the red barns and white farmhouses gleamed like jewels. A dove moaned in the trees near by. She began to speak again musingly. “I’ve missed Malvern, too. I loved to serve you — taking care of your clothes and tidying your room — all that — but I had to give it up, for fear—”

“Fear of me?”

“Fear of myself. It would have been easy to stay there at Malvern — lovely—”

“But you can’t come back,” he said sadly.

“Never!”

“I know that.”

“And I know,” she went on more firmly, “that it isn’t me you heed. You feel at ease with me — not just because of me — but because far back in you somewhere, you’ve mixed me up with Maum Tessie who wetnursed you and took care of you when you were little.”

He flushed, but she raised her hand. “Yes, that’s true. If your — wife — had been softer — you wouldn’t have needed anybody else.”

They fell into silence again. She was complete and untouchable. She had thought through everything as he had never dared to do, had reached the end of herself, had grown to the height of womanhood, and whatever his half-ashamed, unacknowledged yearnings had been he knew now that they would never be fulfilled. … He was amazed and perplexed that in the midst of his disappointment and stifled chagrin, he felt a strange relief.

She rose and drew her shawl about her shoulders and looked at the little gold watch that hung on a short chain from her ribbon belt. “We have been here nearly two hours—”

“Sitting quiet most of the time,” he said, smiling, half sadly.

“But saying all that had to be said,” she replied.

He got up then and they stood for a moment looking over the countryside. Then he turned and put his hands on her shoulders. They were soft under his grip. He looked deep into her dark eyes and she met his gaze faithfully.

“I have a queer contented feeling,” he said.

She smiled back at him.

He went on, choosing his words carefully, one by one, as they distilled in pure essence out of the depths of his being. “For the first time in life, I think I know what the war was about — and I’m glad Tom’s side won — because it made you free and what you are this day.”

“Yes,” she said.

He went away that night and when he was gone Georgia turned to Tom and Bettina.

“I feel it your due that you know what happened between him and me this day,” she said simply.

The children had gone upstairs to bed and they sat in the big sitting room. The soft spring night, drifting in from the open window, was warm with the hint of summer soon to come. Georgia had said almost nothing all evening. Even when Pierce went away she had still said nothing. But she gave him her hand in parting. This was much. Never before had she put out her hand to him as though they were equals. Now they were, and she acknowledged it.

Bettina was sewing on some child’s garment. She put it down. Tom had picked up the newspaper. He let it fall. Both waited.

“You have let me live here as though it were my home,” Georgia went on.

“My home is your home — you know that,” Bettina reminded her. She had aged in these years, and Georgia seemed much the younger in looks and in manner and she deferred to Bettina in everything. Now she looked at her sister and then at Tom. She touched her lips with her tongue. Shy and modest as she was, they could see how difficultly she spoke and they waited, always gentle toward this gentle creature.

“He’s grown older and more thoughtful — as we all do. Whatever it was, he came here this time in need of comfort. And so he thought of me. Bettina,” she turned to her sister. “It’s not like you and Tom. Even if it were — it’s too late. I told him — I want to take Georgy to Europe and get her voice trained.”

“To Europe!” Tom cried.

“I want to go away,” Georgia said. Her lips were trembling. “Very far away, and I would like to help Georgy to sing — the way I always wanted to myself and never could.”

“But the money—” Tom began.

Bettina spoke suddenly. “Tom, I’ve never let you use your inheritance on us. I ask you to use it now.”

He looked at Bettina. She was his wife, though he had been forced to compel her to marriage. When they had moved into this house, when he was headmaster at last of his own small school for boys, he had taken her with him one Sunday to an Amish meeting and by the rites of the Amishmen he had made her his wife and himself her husband. He had put upon her finger the narrow gold ring she had so steadfastly refused to wear. The rite was as much for himself as for her. He wanted to make final, for himself, the thing he had chosen to do. He wanted the sanction of church as well as of conscience. Never would he forget the strange silence of the people in the meeting house. Rigidly accepting his freedom to do what he felt was right, nevertheless he comprehended their conflict, their reluctance at what their own consciences, trained in the creed of non-resistance, insisted upon. But he was content. Bettina became his wife by the law of God. She felt it as he did. Whatever conflict had been between them ceased. They had lived in the peace of isolation from their kind, hers as well as his, dependent upon one another and deeply knit. And yet her fierce independence even of him had never allowed him to spend anything of his inheritance on her or her children until this moment.

“I’ll be proud to use it so,” he said gently.

Two weeks later his house seemed empty. He did not know which to miss more, the singing, fiery, laughing, easily angry girl who was his daughter, or Georgia’s soft presence. Both were gone.